Evann Siebens, A Lexicon of Gesture - LiveStreamed Idiorrhythmias

Calling on histories of performance art, I recreate the gestures and movement of my art heroes, shooting myself in an inverse of the usual male/female, photographer/performer formula. A feminist way to learn, revise and reclaim art history, through the body. A colleague commented that this was a very ‘dancerly’ way to inscribe; a lexicon or archive of the gesture, situated between performing arts, media, dance, visual art and performance histories. The violence of cutting and collaging my own photographic representation becomes a way to insert myself – a woman in my middle years – when one is often erased or ignored in both the quotidian and performance worlds. The gesture in its physical and photographic incarnations becomes a mapping and a trace of both art history giants, and those almost forgotten and erased.

Evann Siebens makes media, performance and photos with movement. Her lens-based practice negotiates the human body as an archival site and the politics of the female gaze. She danced with the National Ballet of Canada and the Bonn Ballett before studying film production at New York University. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Kunstinstituut Melly/Witte de With (Rotterdam 2020), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow 2020), Belkin Gallery (Vancouver 2018). Siebens recently screened a film at Lincoln Center in New York City and won the Outstanding Overall Work prize at the Light Moves Festival in Limerick, Ireland. She will open a major public art project with the Vancouver Art Gallery in April 2021. Her work from A Performance Affair in Brussels, Belgium was featured on the front page of The International New York Times in 2019. She is based in Vancouver, Canada and is represented by Wil Aballe Art Projects.